The Culture of Crisps

Does junk food packaging express culture? I'd say so. Consumer culture, in my view, serves as a kind of common unconscious, wherein a people's deepest and most irrational expectations, fears, memories, hopes, and aspirations are sometimes expressed.

This is one of the reasons travellers tend to focus as much on the seemingly mundane details of another country as we do on its "highest" cultural achievements. Consumer packaging is often an excellent indicator of kinds of material lives people lead---it can imply the size of families and homes, domestic work arrangements, the role of children, pets, media, sports, transportation, religion, etc.

Sometimes the cultural investment is rather more obvious. Case in point, the potato crisp.

The British term for the potato chip is "crisp" ("chips" are thicker fried potatoes, what we call french---sorry, I mean "freedom"---fries.)

Where American chips evoke the commonplace, democratic spirit of the communal feeding trough---"Bar-B-Q," "Ranch," "Smokehouse"----or space-age high tech ---"3-D Flavor Blast!", British crisps come in some "flavours" that seem to aspire to sophisticated international haute cuisine, including:

"Slow Roasted Lamb and Mint"

"Peking Spare Rib and Five Spice"

"Honey Roast Gammon & English Mustard"

This bag of Salt and Vinegar (a flavor that's only recently come to the states) "Jonathan Crisp" features a caricature of an upper-class snob, who peers at us condescendingly through his spectacles. It bears the following notation on the back:

"Sharp, forthright and very well bred, these crisps are proud of their lineage. Splendidly turned out with more than a tang or haughty dignity, these crisps turn a tongue-lashing into an art form."

Another style of Jonathan Crisps (Sea Salt and Black Pepper) reads:

"Simply marvellous and jolly privaleged, these crisps are naturally superior and look down their nose at lesser crisps. With bags of character, refreshingly forthright and disarmingly frank, these are serious tastes for serious minds."

Of course it's all a joke at the expense of the old class system, but can anyone imagine such verbiage on a bag of American chips?

Our snack food rhetoric is practically apocalyptic in its "youth culture"-butressed-by-technocratic-expertise overkill: "TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS EXTREME NACHO CHEESE TASTE EXPLOSION !!!!!!!!!!!